Backgammon HD by Wildcard Classics

Wildcard Classics confronts the user with 3 different Backgammons:

• Backgammon - classic board game - free, 2 in-app purchases (for 2.50€, a Christmas theme and something called Acey Deucey???). Contains ads.
• Backgammon HD which I‘m reviewing here - costs 5.50€, no ads.
• Backgammon Premium, costs 3.50€, offers the in-app purchases as well.

On top, if you use Backgammon HD you can‘t play online against somebody who uses Backgammon - classic board game.

Once you‘re past this confusion (which their website doesn‘t explain, primarily because the URL they provide in the App Store doesn‘t exist), Backgammon HD is a fairly nice game. Not in the same league as the best ones, but good in every respect for casual players.

Backgammon HD offers a beautiful UI with several different skins

Like many Backgammons, BGHD features three difficulty levels - easy/medium/hard. Let‘s have a look at „hard“. It turns out that the app plays a decent game of backgammon. It knows the value of builders, it tries to make points, it hits blots when it should. Of the 11 games I played against it it won one. (I‘m not an expert, btw). 

For confirmation I let XG (PC) play a game against BGHD. BGHD made a good number of correct moves, and a good number of blunders. Not the kind of hyper-blunders that lose a whole game like some other apps I‘ve reviewed lately, but blunders. Not unexpectedly, XG‘s assessment of BGHD was „Beginner“ with a PR of around 30.

If you‘re a casual player and if you look for a good casual player to play fun and challenging games against, this might be your app. If you‘re a Backgammon enthusiast who wants to get better, to learn from your mistakes, it‘s not.

BGHD offers the full backgammon incl. doubling cube. However it feels like the doubling cube was added as an afterthought. Doubling well is an art of its own, and BGHD‘s rule „if you‘re well ahead in the race, double or take“ fails so often so miserably. I‘m winning most of my games at 64 points.

The screenshot above shows the situation after the app re-doubled from 16 to 32. Yes, my pip count is 118 and the app‘s pip count is 104, so it‘s ahead in the race by 12 pips. But I have trapped a stone behind a 5 prime, threatening to make a 6 prime, and it has nothing! This is the time to resign, not to re-double. The game ended with me winning 64 points.